The Revenge of Captain Paine (16 page)

Having returned to his bank from the Grand Northern’s head offices and a lavish lunch of hot roast beef and plum pudding to officially mark the loan agreement between Blackwood’s and the railway company, he made his way up to his office on the top floor of the building and looked out of the narrow window. There were two ravens perched on the sill.

While the evening newspapers had carried reports of the rioting in Huntingdon, none had mentioned the use of soldiers to quell the disturbances. No mention had been made of any loss of life suffered by the navvies, but one paper in particular had no doubt where the blame lay. It was just as Morris had predicted. ‘
This peaceful market town was thrown into the utmost consternation in consequence of one of those disgraceful outrages taking place amongst the navvymen arising out of an apparent disagreement with the good men of Huntingdon
,’ the report had claimed. ‘
They then commenced a bloodthirsty, indiscriminate attack on the town and rioting of such magnitude ensued that special constables had to be sworn in to uphold the peace
.’ The blatant untruthfulness of the piece made him want to find the journalist and ram the paper down his throat.

One of the clerks downstairs had told him that Jem Nash was processing bills in the main office, a large room at the back of the building on the floor below him where a hierarchy of rank and seniority determined who sat closest to the fire. But when he looked into the room, past the rows of clerks sitting at individual desks hunched over their ledger books copying invoices or fingering tall stacks of bills payable, he didn’t see his younger assistant. It was barely two in the afternoon and already it seemed dark, the only light in the room produced by individual candles that burned on each of their desks, alongside the inkwells and goose feathers. A year ago, Pyke had tried to introduce oil and gas lamps but the clerks had objected to the foul smell. Aside from the cashiers who manned the tills in the banking hall, the main business of the bank was undertaken in this room, and whereas his partner, William Blackwood, knew all the clerks by name, Pyke didn’t know a soul and found the room sombre and depressing. They hated him and loved Blackwood.

Nash was down a further flight of stairs in the banking hall and greeted Pyke with evident sheepishness. His boyish face was bruised and swollen, a purple welt the size of a grapefruit bulging from his cheek and making it hard for him to see out of one of his eyes. When he saw Pyke, he grinned as though it were of no consequence, and asked him what he wanted.

Pyke told him that Morris was coming in an hour and needed him to witness their signatures.

‘Signatures for what?’

‘A loan.’ Pyke waited, and added, ‘He wants to borrow some money but he wants it to go no farther than the two of us.’

Pyke started to walk away but turned around, anger rising within him like a gusty wind billowing into an unfurled sail.

Eighteen months earlier, Nash had visited Pyke in his office - he was then a lowly clerk at Lister’s, another private bank in the city - with news that his bank was preparing to pass on or rediscount to Blackwood’s some seemingly sound bills of exchange that would quickly become worthless. Needing to bolster their own cash reserves, Lister’s had bought a rediscounted bill that was due to expire in two months; whereupon a Lancashire spinner was due to pay the bill’s bearer twenty-five thousand pounds. Nash had informed him that his superiors were seeking to ‘sell’ on the bill to another bank because they had been told that the spinner was about to go out of business and wouldn’t be able to meet his debt. (In which case, the bank or institution that had last endorsed the bill would be liable for the full debt.) Even then Pyke had been able to smell Nash’s ambition and they struck a deal. If Nash could somehow gain access to the bank’s vault and find a way of smuggling Pyke into the building, he would reward him with a five per cent stake in Blackwood’s. Two months later, Nash had returned with a set of duplicate keys and the following night they had broken into the Lister’s vault. Though bold, sometimes foolhardily so, Nash had little sense of why Pyke had wanted to gain access to the bank’s safe. Certainly he had seemed confused when Pyke had spent much of the night counting money, rifling through bills of exchange and scribbling down information about outstanding loans.

‘You mean we’re not actually going to take a
thing
?’ Nash had asked, bewildered, doubtless wondering why he’d gone to so much effort to procure wax imprints of the keys they’d needed to gain entry to the vault. He had already started to pack his leather satchel with coins.

‘Why would I risk being caught with a few bags of stolen coins? I could be hung by the neck, and for what? The possibility of making a few hundred pounds.’

‘There must be thousands here, not just a few hundred.’

It had been like watching a starving man enter a patisserie, only to be told that he couldn’t touch a thing.

‘We’re going to put everything back exactly as we found it.’

‘Then why did you make me go to the effort of stealing all those keys?’ That had been further evidence of his petulance, though in fairness Pyke had already decided there was more he liked about Nash than disliked: even then it had felt as if he’d found a man whose ambition, determination, courage and flexible morality reminded Pyke of himself.

‘Because we’re not just going to steal a few coins and some notes,’ Pyke had said. ‘We’re going to steal the whole bank.’

He had enjoyed the younger man’s reaction: the delicious truth finally dawning on him.

Pyke’s inventory of the vault’s contents had confirmed what he had suspected ever since Nash’s initial revelations: Lister’s had borrowed short, lent long (where the money was tied up in speculative investments) and kept too little in reserve.

A month later, and with some help from Pyke, Lister’s closed its doors for the last time. Pyke had picked up the pieces, assimilating what remained of it into Blackwood’s. A week after that, and in spite of concerns about Nash’s inexperience, he’d come good on his promise and offered Nash a small stake in his business.

Still, it was Nash’s gambling, rather than his inexperience, which had caused Pyke most worry and, though he had quickly displayed an acute aptitude for business and had rapidly learnt the rudiments of banking, his recklessness at the roulette tables had earned him an altogether less favourable reputation.

‘So how much did you lose this time?’ Pyke’s booming voice echoed around the hall. They were closed for business but the cashiers were counting up inside their booths.

‘I was
this
close to the biggest win of my life.’ He held his thumb and index finger together until they almost touched and grinned.

‘One hundred?’

Licking his lips, Nash looked around the hall. ‘Couldn’t we perhaps talk about this somewhere more private?’

‘Did other people at the gaming house see you lose your money?’

Nash bowed his head and didn’t answer.

‘Then it’s not a private matter, is it?’ Pyke felt the blood rising in his neck. ‘Was it more than a hundred?’

When Nash didn’t answer him, Pyke slapped him on his bruised cheek.

The younger man winced and his eyes glowed with indignation. ‘It’s my business, not yours.’

‘You’re a partner in this bank. That means if you can’t pay your debts, the person you owe money to can come after us.’ He hit Nash again, this time on the other cheek and harder, his knuckles closed. ‘More than this, you owe money to someone you’re beholden to. It makes you weak and other people will sniff out your weakness and exploit it.’

In the booths the cashiers had stopped counting their coins and were watching the exchange.

‘I’ll settle my debts.’

This time Pyke almost lifted him by the throat and marched him across to one of the cashiers. ‘Before you gamble away your own money, you can settle your debt with me.’ Turning him around, Pyke pressed Nash’s face against the iron grille of the booth and said, ‘This gentleman here would like to withdraw a hundred pounds from his account. If he doesn’t have the funds, I authorise you to take it out of his next quarterly drawings.’

Terrified, the cashier gathered up the money and, with trembling hands, passed the notes through the grille.

‘That’s for the business with Gold.’ Pyke pocketed the money and wiped the palm of his hand on his coat. ‘I want you to greet Morris here in the hall at three and show him up to my office.’

Glowering and humiliated, Nash nodded but said nothing.

TEN

They didn’t make it back to Hambledon until five and it took a further half-hour to gather Emily, Felix and Jo together in order to make the short journey to Cranborne Park where, Morris assured Pyke, Marguerite and another guest, Abraham Gore, awaited them. Pyke knew Gore only by reputation and was curious to meet the man. During the journey from London, Morris had explained that Gore was one of his oldest friends; they’d known one another for thirty years.

To say that Gore was already a legend in London’s world of business would have been a gross understatement. His story was one that fathers told their children in the hope of instilling in them grand ambitions and a hard-work ethic. As a younger man, Gore had inherited a country bank in Warwickshire; by the time he was thirty he’d opened a further ten branches throughout the West Midlands; by forty, he had extended his banking empire into Lancashire as well as moving his headquarters to one of the grandest addresses in the City. Nowadays, Gore’s was not only the largest private bank in London, larger even than Rothschild’s or Coutts: Gore had also opened subsidiary branches in Edinburgh, Brussels and Dublin.

The most curious detail about Gore’s career, however, related to his personal life, or rather his lack of personal life. For years, he had been touted by society columns and gossip magazines as one of London’s most eligible bachelors - he was said, by some, to be the nation’s wealthiest businessman - but he had never taken a wife, nor shown any inclination to do so. Furthermore, throughout his time in the capital Gore had lived in comfortable, but by no means extravagant, circumstances, in a suite of chambers at the Richmond Hotel, paying just a hundred pounds a year for the privilege. He also owned a large estate in the Warwickshire countryside but his modest, even ascetic tastes and his apparent lack of interest in settling down with a wife had, rightly or wrongly, earned Gore a reputation as an eccentric.

Morris had greeted Emily and Felix warmly and told them he hoped they wouldn’t be too uncomfortable in his rickety old carriage. In fact there was more than enough room for all of them and when the carriage came to a halt at the front steps of Morris’s Palladian mansion, Felix was first out of the door, closely followed by Jo. Pyke and Morris alighted last and Pyke looked up towards the portico, where Marguerite had gathered Felix up into her arms. Next to her, an older man, whom Pyke presumed was Gore, smiled amiably and patted Felix gently on the head. When Pyke and Morris joined the party in the entrance hall, Marguerite had already introduced herself to Emily and only reluctantly passed Felix on to Jo. ‘He’s such a sweet, delightful boy,’ Pyke heard her gush to Emily. He was uncomfortable about the whole idea of Emily meeting and perhaps even befriending his old flame, and vice versa. While Emily was formally introduced to Abraham Gore, Pyke took a moment to compare the two women in his mind. With her tall, slim figure and clear, unblemished skin, Emily was unquestionably beautiful, but in a natural way that stood in contrast with Marguerite’s preened sophistication. And while Emily’s preference for Empire waistlines and simple, loose-fitting dresses made her seem wilfully anachronistic, Marguerite’s pale pink dress, laced tightly around the waist to accentuate her figure, reflected the very latest Parisian fashion.

When it was his turn, Pyke shook Marguerite’s outstretched hand, neither of them meeting the other’s eye, and then greeted Gore, who took both of his hands and squeezed them as though they were old friends. Gore’s ruddy cheeks and beaming smile put Pyke in mind of his uncle, and he had something of Godfrey’s warmth. The main difference between the men was that Gore’s shiny head was apparently almost devoid of hair and, perhaps to conceal or indeed to compensate for this, he wore a black top hat even inside the house. It matched his black frock-coat and black trousers. He looked even more like a banker than Pyke’s partner, William Blackwood.

From the entrance hall, Morris led them into the drawing room, where a fire was burning in the grate and a collection of china cups and saucers had already been laid out on the polished mahogany table. Marguerite and Emily complimented each other on their dresses, while Morris, Gore and Pyke hovered at the threshold of the room. Felix, in the meantime, had raced up the main staircase and was being carried back down by Jo, trying to free himself from her grip. ‘A spirited lad,’ Gore said, smiling. ‘I like to see young lads with spirit.’

‘Your dress is so lovely and . . . simple,’ Marguerite was saying to Emily.

Taking Morris to one side, Pyke asked him very quietly whether everything was all right.

‘Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?’ Morris said, glaring.

‘You left my bank this afternoon with ten thousand pounds. Perhaps I have a right to be nervous.’

Morris gave him a hard stare and whispered, ‘It ceased being your money when I signed those documents.’ His look told Pyke he didn’t want to discuss the matter any further and they both rejoined the group.

‘Why are you wearing a hat inside the house?’ Felix had just asked Gore, once Jo had put him down.

Laughing, Gore removed the hat and self-consciously arranged his few strands of hair. He handed it to Felix, who tried to put it on his own head, only to discover it was too large. Morris joined in the laughter and Felix, enjoying the attention, proceeded to repeat the trick.

Emily went across to rescue Gore from the attention of their son. As she did so, Pyke shared a brief glance with Marguerite and wondered whether she would let anything slip about their shared past. He also wondered why he hadn’t said anything to Emily and whether Marguerite might exploit his silence in this regard, to try to embarrass him. He wondered, too, whether she had said anything to Morris about their past, deciding that she probably wouldn’t have, and probably wouldn’t allude to their liaison. Morris seemed to think she had fallen in love with the house and estate on their own merits and Marguerite wouldn’t want to disabuse him of this notion. No, he was safe for the time being, but this thought didn’t make him feel any more comfortable about the prospect of the next hour or two.